This magnificent tank can be seen evolving in public a couple of times a year, (if breakdowns don’t prevent it), at Museum’s Tankfest exhibition day and on “its own” Tiger‘s Day. On both occasions it is possible to see it performed along with a lot of other exceptionally well preserved vehicles from the Museum’s collection.
The Tiger 131 (on the image) can be seen on screen in several movies. The first is a British film shot in 1946 and titled “Theirs Is the Glory”, four years later it appears in the British film “They Were Not Divided” and more recently in 2014 it appears in a spectacular sequence in the American film “Fury”. In this last film the Tiger 131 is defeated against the protagonist Sherman after a crazy but exciting combat in the purest World of Tanks style.
Is this tank a Tiger one?, the answer is …… no, but it looks a lot like it. This vehicle belongs to the Duxford IWM collection and is exhibited in the Landwarfare Hall and is actually a transformed T-34 tank that was used for the making of Saving Private Ryan movie. The truth is that it hits the screen, (except the running gear), but it is to be assumed that since they can not have an authentic Tiger tank, there was no choice but to adopt this solution, and in my modest opinion, the result was quite worthy.
The German tank ace Otto Carius wrote his memoirs in a book entitled “Tigers in the mud”, which describes without political fanaticism the daily life of a tanker in war. The book details the typical operations of a Company type unit and is a must read for all tank enthusiasts in order to better understand the conditions in which these men fought, generally quite harsh and dangerous, away from the glamour and false pride spread from the officers.
Otto Carius ended the war as a renowned tanker commanding a Jagdtiger tank destroyer, but successes came to him in command of his Tiger 213 (on the image) on the Eastern Front. During his career he destroyed about 150 enemy tanks, most of them in Russia.
Javier

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Javier